JOURNAL 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. VIII FEBRUARY 4, 1918 No. 3 



CHEMISTRY.— MeMorfs of gas warfare.' S. J. M. Auld, 

 British Military Mission. (Communicated by L. J. Briggs). 



All I can do in the short time available is to give you, if I can, 

 a general idea of what gas warfare really means on the Western 

 Front at the present time. Some of you may have gotten the 

 idea that gas is just an incident, and that there is not as much 

 attention being paid to it as there was two years ago. That 

 idea is entirely wrong. Gas is used to a tremendous extent, and 

 the amount that has been and is being hurled back and forth in 

 shells and clouds is almost unbelievable. I will try to give you 

 a general idea of what is occurring and make the lecture rather 

 a popular than a technical description. I shall also, for obvious 

 reasons, have to confine myself to describing what the Germans 

 have been doing, and will say nothing about what we are doing, 



Possibl}^ the best plan would be to state more or less chron- 

 ologically what occurred. I happened to be present at the 

 first gas attack and saw the whole gas business from the begin- 

 ning. The first attack was made in April, 1915. A deserter 

 had come into the Ypres salient a week before the attack was 

 made, and had told us the whole story. They were preparing 

 to poison us with gas, and had cyhnders installed in their 

 trenches. No one believed him at all, and no notice was taken 

 of it. 



' Report of a lecture delivered before the Washington Academy of Sciences 

 on January 17, 1918. 



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